Unnormals Politics
Hello,
How are you?
I am fine.
I am Nic Microscopic, of the Unnormals. I write the lyrics, play the guitar, and it is my voice on the recordings. I have been made aware that I should post a more verbal explanation of my politics if there is to be less confusion for some listeners. I do present a political message with songs and videos that may be supported with a longer verbal explanation of my thoughts than songs or videos allow, and so here we are.
As I am an American, let me start with a quote from Thomas Jefferson. “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
As I am from Philadelphia, let us also hear the words of Benjamin Franklin. “Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.”
I am an optimist politically. I believe that liberty, justice, truth, knowledge, understanding, logic, and strength are all vitally important to our society. I believe that action is important, but that it should never precede those others except in their defense. I believe that cynicism, apathy, and ignorance are the enemies of a free society. I respect the hopeful. I admire the visionary. I hope for changes that will be positive and logical. I have no respect whatsoever for those who say that all is lost, and that it was always this way. It was not always this way. All is not lost. There are things to do to fix it. There is thought. There is discussion. There is action. This is your life that you are living, so do something with it. Think. Educate. Learn. Hope. Vote. If you are just going to say nothing can be done, please stop talking as your apathy will spread like a virus. If you are not willing to stand up for your beliefs, or you will not bother to even believe in them anymore, then you are no good to any political discussion. If you have your heart set on being cynical, then just at least be quiet about it. Seriously.
I do not believe that I can change the world. I am microscopic in more than just name to the scale of the discussion at hand. That does not mean that I have nothing to say. I may have a few conversations in this life that change a mind or two here or there, but I am not a leader. I do not wish to lead anything. I am not selling anything. I am just speaking, because I can, and because I must. I believe that our country can be much greater than this, and that part of the path towards that greatness involves admitting and correcting previous mistakes. It is not too late.
I personally do not believe that it was appropriate to restrict any of our liberties for security, nor do I believe that we should continue with limiting our rights in this manner. Some countries in the modern world have tried that tactic for decades, and it has not aided their cause of security in the least. This is because it cannot, due to the basic goal of terrorism. Terrorism attacks a sense of security for the purpose of being taken seriously as a political power. Every act of terrorism is publicity for their cause, and so is every public attempt to adapt to it made by their adversary. Terrorists have defeated you when you stop viewing them as criminals, start viewing them as adversaries, and go to war with them openly, inadvertently killing innocents, destroying cultures, creating new allies for them with your mistakes, and giving away all of your virtues to attempt to defeat them. Fear is their weapon. Panic is their hope. Over reaction is their goal. The terrorist wants to push a society to react with terror. A reasonable solution to the problem of terrorism must not involve inadvertently killing civilians, torturing people, imprisoning the innocent, destroying cultures, fueling political tensions, overthrowing nations, or removing ourselves from international laws. A reasonable solution to terrorism would involve keeping all of our virtue, and retaining all of our liberties, and most of all not being terrified, while we work to build a greater international police force to deal with international criminals. War and nationalism are not possible solutions to terrorism. Liberty and justice will be our salvation if we are serious about defeating it. Strength of resolve for our beliefs is our true defense against the madness of fear.
A military cannot defeat terrorists with military action. No military can. It is not possible, as terrorists are civilians, and very difficult to separate from civilian populations. They are criminals and can be dealt with only through international police work. There is no way to be entirely safe from terrorism. To try to be entirely safe one will give over the entirety of life in the bargain. A foreign military waging a military action against a civilian popultion of criminals hiding inside a civilian population of innocents will gradually manage to turn innocents into adversaries, and opponents to their mere presence into terrorists. In Iraq at this time and as always the casualties are mostly Iraqis. Our military is fantastic, but they cannot defeat terrorism through occupation of foreign nations, or military actions involving civilian populations. It is just not possible.
Iraq was not involved in 911, so the situation is all the more ludicrous. They did not have weapons of mass destruction as we claimed, and that simply means we were completely wrong. In Afghanistan we have international support because we were right to send soldiers there as the government had collapsed and it was a breeding ground for our actual enemies.
We simply had need of better international police agencies in 2001, and as the United States this is where we should have focused all of our attention, and soldiers, and treasure. Instead we chose open war with Iraqis for no sound reasons, nationalistic changes to our rights for no sound reasons, and fear instead of liberty.
We have lost our way so significantly in this regard that I am ashamed of all of our leaders, for they have become so weak in their defense of our country that they have forfeited important elements of our way of life out of fear. We have leaned towards ignorance and nationalism and at great cost. If this is not corrected at this important juncture, then I am loathe to predict what happens when those laws are then bent against unpopular voices and minorities to greater degrees and with no failsafe. Absolute power will corrupt absolutely.
We are Americans. We should not torture people, or even discuss the notion as though it has merit. We should not remove ourselves from the Geneva Conventions. We should not attack sovereign nations on our own without the backing of the international community, no matter how evil they might be. We should not keep our National Reservists locked indefinitely in conflict, without either a withdrawal plan, or a draft proposal. We should not allow wire tapping. We should not allow secret searches of American citizens. We should not allow secret prisons. We should not be committing war crimes, and we should uphold the merit of the international courts to prove how strongly we feel on the subject. We should not be debating habeas corpus. We should rail against the Patriot Act in the name of patriotism. We should hold Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney responsible for their unacceptable failures of judgement in exercising their power to test political science theories at the expense of reason, our soldiers lives and our international credibility. They should all three apologize to the families of every soldier in Iraq for their personal hubris and its results. Whoever said that there were definitely weapons of mass destruction should be fired and not promoted in favor of more competent leaders. If they said it to the nation, or to the United Nations, they should apologize at the very least for a falure to be competent. We should impeach the President of the United States for a complete failure of leadership, and a seeming inability to understand the reality of foreign or domestic affairs. We should be debating issues in these primaries of greater significance than race, gender, and age of the candidates. We should be Americans.
Americans should not fear truth or reason. Americans should not abandon themselves to ruin. Americans should defend their liberty and their freedom, from themselves if need be.
We should not give up our freedoms and liberties lightly, and it was lightly. We gave some of them up to criminals. We gave some of them up to poor leadership. There is this ongoing debate about not letting the terrorists win, but this is madness. They won. We changed so many things out of fear that they did get what they wanted. That was more than they could have ever hoped for. We are debating many relatively unimportant issues in our country compared with liberty and freedom, and that should change.
I express sincere outrage, because my opinion is not being represented by any prominent politicians in these last eight years. I want to express very clearly, as loudly as possible, and as politely as necessary to be heard if at all possible, that I disagree with the notion that to move forward we must not look at our mistakes. I feel that there are tremendous mistakes of logic being made by leaders who fail to represent even basic principles of their country. This leadership has been so weak, dishonest, and corrupt that it will be our destruction if we do not turn away from madness and return to the defense of liberty.
There are those who say that the world is different now, and that we cannot go back to replace our freedoms and our liberties. They say that we must adapt to this modern threat in new ways. They are wrong. We are Americans. We can be just as strong now, as ever before. If we did need new ways to deal with modern threats, nationalism and fear mongering are not new. Nationalism is the enemy of individual freedom, and fear mongering is the enemy of personal liberty. Both of these are also very poor solutions to the problems at hand. I suggest that we need strong solutions to deal with modern threats. As our regard for liberty and freedom have gotten us to the 21st century quite well, I think we will do well to keep them, and in some ways restrengthen them. It is through our virtues that we shall prevail. Let the voices of fear mongering be afraid, for we shall be free when we embrace our liberties and fear no more.
I am an American, and quite proud of it. I believe in the United States of America, and I believe that it has principles of freedom and liberty that are worth defending, which are in need of defense against a blight of ignorance, apathy, and cynicism at this juncture in our history within my own country. I am expressing my opinions, because I do believe them, and I will defend those opinions as well.
I would hope that others, with more influence than myself, would speak up more loudly and more often on the subjects that they deem important, for there are important things happening that are worth speaking up about. Whether I agree with you or not, I sincerely hope that all of you will be informed, that you will be engaged, that you will ask questions, that you will speak your mind, and that you will vote.
Sincerely,
Nic Microscopic